Friday, December 17, 2010

Simply Having a Creepy Christmas Time

Just totally grossed out a room full of college students with my sweet pinkeye. In my defense, I have been on antibiotics since Tuesday, so I am pretty sure I am not contagious, and I carried their exams to the room with gloves on and then set up a little exam and blue book buffet in front of the room so they could help themselves. But still. Pinkeye is gross.

Since I had a little free time yesterday while the kids were in school, I made Santa videos for both of them through Portable North Pole (http://www.portablenorthpole.tv/home).

Effing creepy, people.

You can give Santa your child's name, age, hair and eye color, year in school, and toy s/he most wants for the holiday. Then Santa talks right to the kid and checks his list for his/her behavior status. CREEPY. After Santa names the child's most desired toy, he says "Have you been nice enough this year?" giving the child just enough time to titter nervously before he says, "Ho, ho, ho, we'll have to wait and see."

We watched Harry's video first, and Jack kept saying, "Weird. Weird. Too weird." We asked Jack if he wanted to watch his, and he said, "No. Too creepy."

(For the record, I am totally with him. I didn't grow up with Santa, and I think the whole thing is pretty damn weird. It's like the panopticon AND Big Brother with the constant observation and the doublespeak. Creep city. I always thought opening the door for Elijah during Seder was whacked-out and that the Tooth fairy was too intrusively freaky for $1-- Santa really takes the cake. Fatty.)

Harry LOVED it. Santa told him he had to be nice to his bother, and later that night, he shoved Jack with both hands, knocking him backwards into the toy box. Ben told Harry to go sit in time out, and Harry started to refuse. Then he stopped, put his hands on his hips, and said, "Okay, I'll go. But only because we just watched that message."

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous11:49 AM

    Love love love this post and had to send it around. Part humor part pertinent teaching moment ... the care centers gramps has been interacting with bother me cause they're panoptic structures! Like prisons! Thanks Za. Boo

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  2. Anonymous7:09 PM

    Hmm...this sounds like potential evidence about the effectiveness of tailored media interventions for behavior change.

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  3. Hahaha, Santa is really creepy when you think about it. Really funny post.

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  4. totally had to look up the word "panoptic"--sigh, I used to be so smart. ;-)

    Yeah, I didn't grow up w/ Santa either and the whole concept is a bizarre mixture of magical and creepy. I have a friend whose daughter believed until she was 11; I am really hoping Ethan grows out of it before then--that's a lot of years of creepy.

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  5. I am so doing that! My kids really aren't affected by me threatening Santa. Clearly, nothing works on them.

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  6. This post was so funny! I hope Jack wasn't too traumatized. Santa, like hot dogs, is best if you don't think about it too much.

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  7. Love this!!! I'm not sure how long Santa will last around these parts since Blake is already asking how he gets into our house since, "We don't even have a chimney mom..."

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